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Blatchford: London, Ont., mayor convicted of fraud, breach of trust

London Mayor Joe Fontana walks from the London, Ont., courthouse where a judge convicted him Friday of fraud in a case that dates back to his time as a Liberal MP. Photo: Dave Chidley/THE CANADIAN PRESS

LONDON, Ont. — The morning crew at 98.1 Free FM, a rock station in this city, were trying to have a little fun on Friday with the then-looming Joe Fontana decision.

They set up a “verdict wheel” on a downtown street, with alternating slots of Innocent and Guilty, one of the three hosts dressed up in a long white wig and gavel as a judge, and passersby were invited to have a go. Just for stopping by, some people even got a free can of President’s Choice “Italian wedding” soup.

It was pretty clever — Fontana’s trial was all about his son Michael’s wedding — especially in the hosts’ banter, where the other two laughed deliberately over-heartily at every word the judge uttered, just as happens in the actual courts.

But the results were evenly divided, both in the results of spins given the wheel and in the predictions the passersby made: The joke was going a little flat.

But then, within the hour, just when it seemed that almost anything a Liberal in this province — pretty much any Liberal, too — touched would somehow turn dross to gold, the verdict wheel spun for real and the mayor of London, Ont., emerged as a notable exception.

The 64-year-old was briskly convicted of fraud under $5,000, uttering a forged document and breach of trust by Ontario Superior Court Judge Bruce Thomas in a 19-page decision that eviscerated his proffered defence.

Fontana will return to court July 15 for sentencing.

London Mayor Joe Fontana laughs during a break in testimony. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Dave Chidley

At the heart of the matter was a $1,700 expense claim he submitted in the spring of 2005, when he was the MP for London North Centre and also the federal minister for labour and housing in former prime minister Paul Martin’s government.

It was a trifling amount by Fontana’s standards. On the one hand, he had already personally paid $5,000 toward the $18,900 wedding; on the other, he had a $260,000 budget for his MP functions alone.

“While I am perplexed as to why a man of such accomplishment might choose to take these actions for $1,700,” Judge Thomas said, “… I have long ago abandoned the notion that motive results from a logical cost-benefit analysis.”

The same, of course, can be said of most criminals.

The claim was for a “miscellaneous constituent reception” held at the Marconi Club, an Italian social club where Fontana has long been a member. Attached to the submitted claim was a contract with a unique number — 2661 — for his son’s wedding reception, held a few months after the purported political gathering.

To make the document look legit, Fontana heavily doctored it, whiting-out his wife Vicky’s signature with old-fashioned correction fluid and adding his own, photocopying the remade document so that, as the prosecutor Tim Zuber suggested at trial, “big globs of Wite-Out” wouldn’t draw attention, and changing the purpose of the function as well as the date.

As a finishing touch, he wrote “Original” in blue ink at the top.

London Mayor Joe Fontana walks to the London, Ont., courthouse on the first day of his fraud trial Monday, May 26, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Dave Chidley)

The $1,700, Thomas found, Fontana fully intended to be paid directly to him, and, as he noted, “If that had happened, no one would have been the wiser and we would not be here.”

But a staffer’s mistake saw the cheque mailed instead to the club, where it was duly cashed, no questions asked, against the balance owed for the June 4, 2005, wedding.

“At that point, it became a problem,” the judge said. “He (Fontana) could hardly ask that it be reissued.”

At bottom, as Judge Thomas said flatly of Fontana’s convoluted explanation for why he’d sat down one night at his home with a bottle of Wite-Out and an eraser, “I disbelieve him.”

One of Fontana’s old friends, Vince Trovato, a former Marconi Club president, testified as a defence witness. Fontana, who also took the stand in his own defence, said that he’d arranged a room at the club for a gathering to be held Feb. 25 in honour of then-Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale, who was coming to town to plump his new budget. Essentially, Trovato, whose scorn for the proceedings was tangible, backed him up.

The judge accepted Fontana’s testimony that the Goodale event indeed had been “contemplated” for Feb. 25, but had to be cancelled a few days before.

“However,” the judge said, “where his (Fontana’s) evidence seeks to describe a legitimate motive for his actions related to this payment of $1,700, I reject it completely.”

Thomas concluded, he said, that Fontana and Trovato “either collectively or individually concocted a story for this court that was intended to create a reasonable doubt and in doing so allow Fontana to escape conviction.”

Afterwards, outside court, Fontana pronounced himself “very surprised, shocked, devastated” and regretted “that all this had to happen, especially for the people of London.” Asked if he would resign from the mayor’s office, he promised a statement “in the near future.”

His lawyer, the affable Gord Cudmore, told reporters that possible penalties range from an absolute discharge to “some time in custody.”

The judge kindly noted that Michel Champagne, the civil servant who’d approved the fraudulent claim — one of 90,000 he processes every year — and the House of Commons comptroller, had been criticized for doing a less than stellar job.

“It must be remembered that Mr. Champagne was relying upon a document forged by a sitting MP. … It is unreasonable to expect the office of the comptroller to inspect hundreds of claims for active fraud and forgery by sitting members.

“They should not shoulder the blame for these criminal acts,” he said, and laid it squarely on the shoulders of the short, unhappy man before him.

Christie Blatchford was born in Quebec and studied journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. She has written for all four Toronto-based newspapers. She has won a National Newspaper Award for column... read more writing and in 2008 won the Governor-General’s Literary Award in non-fiction for her book Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army.View author's profile